China DOS Union

Something went wrong with my machine, and I don't know what's going on. When I got up today, I found that my hard disk's D and E drives were both inaccessible. The operating system is WIN2000, and the hard disk format is NTFS. Later I used partition software to convert those two partitions into FAT32 partitions. The drive letters became accessible, but a lot of the files inside were missing! I don't know why. Right now I'm thinking maybe the file allocation table is damaged. I don't know whether some software can be used to recover it. There is important data on the hard disk, so!!! This is urgent! Can someone help me?

Try using PartitionMagic80 to convert the two partitions back to NTFS and see whether the files can be found again. Before converting, don't do any write operations to the partitions.

What software can convert NTFS to FAT32 without damaging the data?

I thought of that too, but under 98, PartitionMagic80 can't change FAT32 back to NTFS. Can it do it under 2000?
But the PartitionMagic80 I'm using doesn't work well under 2000! Can it really help? Where can I download it?

You need to use the DOS version of PartitionMagic 7.0 or above,
otherwise it'll leave you wanting to cry!
Take care of yourself!

After installing the full edition of PartitionMagic80, there should be two files in its folder, PMagic9x.exe and PMagicNT.exe, for use under 9x and under NT or 2000 respectively.

What do you think the chances are of recovering it now? I know PM8.0 has versions for both 98 and 2000, but the one under 2000 seems not to work well. I don't know where you downloaded yours from, or whether there's some setting I didn't configure correctly!

It may not be recoverable, because pqmagic 8.0 is the English version. During NTFS->FAT32 conversion, it can't convert Chinese directories and files, which is why so many files were lost. I suggest using the Chinese edition of PQMAGIC6.0 for conversion in the future.

No, I was using PartitionMagic80 under WIN98, and it's in Chinese, so there shouldn't be any problem, right?

Right now I just want to ask how good my chances are of fixing it, and also what software would give a better chance of recovery?

Try EasyRecovery and Lost&Found.

The safest way is to use the DOS version of PartitionMagic8.0 to do the conversion, that is, a Win98 minimum-configuration boot disk, the kind made with Format /s, and then copy the PartitionMagic8.0 files onto it too. I ran into this before as well. Because versions below 8.0, such as 7.0, do not fully support long filenames, after conversion many filenames end up wrong, and some files may even become unfindable. But with 8.0 there is absolutely no problem. Another possibility is that your computer was infected by some kind of virus. If that's the case, then it depends on luck, and you may not be able to recover all the data.